Sometimes the truth transcends what we see and hear. Uninvited and unseen it stands in front of us, while we focus on the noise and angry words being voiced all around us. In some very special instances, truth makes herself known, despite the distractions that demand our attention in modern life.

Credit Roger Simon of PJMedia with the observation that cuts to the heart of the loud and noisy campaign rhetoric engulfing us. The debate performance so much of America saw between Romeny and Obama was not about the issues that were raised or the words that were bandied back and forth between the two men.

The issue was far more deep and guttural to the human soul. Mr. Simon frames it – absolutely correctly, I believe – as the “Good Father vs The Abandoned Son.” Quoting Simon, “What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation – between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his.”

It took a classically trained novelist to see such a thing. Someone who recognized the Greek drama and gods involved in the story. Someone who understood that truth sometimes transcends what we see and hear. And someone who could articulate what he saw.

To most of America and the world, the election will be about the economy, national defense and Obama’s record. Big media, oblivious to the conflict Mr. Simon describes, will continue to push Obama on America. Since the media can no longer hide or seal his current record – as they have his previous one – they will continue to rewrite that record through ever more brazen falsehoods spoken as facts.

But the election is no longer about those things. It’s about fatherhood; more specifically, it’s about America’s fatherhood. If America wants the type of father Obama himself hated, they will vote for him, because that’s all he will be able to provide as president. If America wants the kind of father who invested his life in his children, they will vote for Romney. Because that is what he did for his own family, and that is what he will do as president.

A clear choice? It’s well beyond a clear choice. It’s a gut choice taking place at the deepest levels of human emotion. Yet most of us are oblivious. We will find intellectual reasons for our choice. That, too, is part of our humanity.